Meter Maids Eat Their Young (27 page)

Once settled in my office, I toyed with my pencil, spinning it on the desk, doodling on the corners of the sheet of paper where I was trying to collect my thoughts. It wasn't working. They fluttered about like fireflies at mating time with no coherent pattern to their flight.

I was about ready to give it up, resigning myself to the idea of getting up extra early and going at them again in the morning when the phone on my desk rang. It startled me. No one ever called me on that phone. I picked it up midway through the second ring.

“Hel …”

“Teller!” It was a gasp and then the clatter of a handset being dropped to the floor. I bolted from the chair and ran from my office, knocking over a trash can and colliding with a desk as I ran across the newsroom toward the elevators. It was Felice's terrified voice on the phone.

I skidded halfway across the foyer and fell on my ass. From my supine position, I glanced at the floor indicator over the elevator doors. It was moving downward, nearly to the basement garage. It would take forever for it to get back up here to the third floor. I clambered up and ran for the stairs.

The building was old and the lighting in the stairwell was dim. As I rounded the landing between the fourth and fifth floor, I came to a halt.  There, on the floor was Rafe's body, his head twisted at an angle that suggested he wouldn't be moving anytime soon. Not under his own power, anyway.

I stepped over him and flew up the last set of stairs. Bursting through the stairwell door, I slid on the marble floor, using the far wall as a bouncing-off point to steady myself and turn toward HL's office. Chaos greeted me there. Office supplies were scattered everywhere. Felice was on the floor, leaning against the credenza, her hair in disarray, her face bloodied. I knelt down beside her.

“The police are on their way,” she whispered. “I called them.”

“Albert?”

“No need. He knows.”

I didn't bother to ask how.

“What happened here?” I said, even though I had a sick feeling that I already knew the answer.

“Check on HL,” she said. “Go, now. I'll be all right.”

I left her side and stepped into HL's office. It looked like a tornado had swept through it.

“HL,” I called out, dispensing with protocol. I heard a groan and hurried to the other side of the desk. He was wedged up inside the foot well. His clothes were torn, his face and hair red with blood. I reached in and eased him out, on his back, resting his head in my lap.

A moment later, I heard loud voices in the other room and a moment after that I was surrounded by paramedics. They took over and once I was out from under HL, I moved back into Felice's office.

Cops began swarming all over, trailing in and out like ants at a picnic. Albert had arrived and was helping Felice to her feet and lowering her into a chair. A paramedic began ministering to her wounds. I started to move over to them when two paramedics, the same two who had been at my house the other night, came out HL's office, pushing a chrome gurney. HL lay on it, covered in a white sheet toe to neck. An oxygen mask covered his face.

It all began to click into place then. Rafe, dead, sprawled out on the landing. I had no doubt the tickets were gone. Rafe had been the mole. I was sure of it now. They must have had something on him; probably that damn car of his. He overheard us earlier; heard me describe my friend; heard HL say he would check around.

Heard me talk about the tickets.

He must have run out, and called whoever it was, and this was the result. Then, once he'd served their purpose – and because he could identify them – they disposed of him like yesterday's garbage. Poor Rafe. I should have seen it that day in my office, the way he stared at the envelope in my hand, he must have suspected what it contained, that weird quip about his car being towed.  He was scared, jumpy, the always-happy Rafe. He'd as much as told me then if I'd just listened, understood what he was saying. But I didn't. And I had all but given him a map to where I was taking those tickets.

I stepped back as the gurney passed, looked over to where Felice and Albert sat. An EMS tech brought a wheelchair over and he and Albert helped Felice into it. I could tell she was protesting, but it was a feeble gesture. As they wheeled her out, following the gurney, the sounds in the room began to fade as though they too were moving away from me, leaving the room as those few I cared for in this world were leaving it. I turned and wandered back into HL's office. The crime scene techs were doing their thing. I hadn't even seen them arrive.

Both chairs in front of the desk were overturned. Two of his priceless Queen Anne bookcases were toppled to the floor, glass doors smashed, books scattered. The desk itself, that mammoth hunk of near solid oak, was turned part way around. The old man must have put up a hell of a fight.

I walked over to the windows, turned and watched them work, trying hard to ride the wave of guilt I felt. I should never have given the old man those tickets. Better I was the one on the gurney, not him.

Deep in my thoughts, I didn't notice when the CSI crew left.

The room was dark, the moonlight through the windows and the light from Felice's office casting eerie shadows across the floor. I tried to remember who had turned the lights off, or if they had been off when I first arrived. Surely the CSI guys would have turned them on.

Pushing myself from my solitary position against the wall, I began to wander about the room, picking up books. HL's tastes crossed all ages and all genre boundaries. The classics like Kurt Vonnegut, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Shakespeare mingled amidst the shards of glass, with the modern works of authors like Jon Clinch, A. S. King, Sara Gruen and Cat Connor. I picked them up, one by one, dusted them off, and began stacking them up in neat piles along the wall.

I must have grown tired, or bored, or maybe I had just run out of books to stack, for I found myself seated on the floor, thumbing through a copy of Melanie Benjamin's
Alice I Have Been
, when I heard a noise in Felice's office. Turning to investigate, I saw a figure back-lit in the doorway.

The book fell from my hands. My first panicked thought was that my friend had returned, but I quickly dismissed it. What would be the point? He had what he wanted. Why come back and risk capture?

“This is what you get when you hold things back, Teller.”

Marion. I rose to my feet, my heart thumping in my chest, guilt and anger-fueled adrenalin flowing into my system with every beat.

“You think I wanted this?” I said, louder than I'd intended but not loud enough to appease my anger. “You think I'm not beating myself up sufficiently, so you have to come in here with your self-righteous bullshit words of wisdom?”

He stepped into the room. I moved two steps closer to him. We stood, facing each other, fists balled. Once brothers-in-arms, we'd morphed into bitter antagonists, finding ourselves united in an uneasy détente over the death of a mutual friend. And now, here we were, staring each other down, ready to tear each other apart.

I blinked first.

“Fuck this,” I said, letting go of the anger in the uncurling of my hands. I turned my back on him and walked to the windows.

“You know about the tickets,” I said, staring down at the deserted street below.

“I know about them,” he said.  “Now.”

“Felice.”

He nodded; a constrained nod that looked more like a spasmodic jerk than an affirmation.

“I had no idea what they meant,” I said. “Leastwise not until my friend tried to hand me a coin for a boat ride across the river Styx.”

“You should have turned them over to me as soon as you found them.”

“Believe it or not, I considered that. HL was opposed to the idea, and you know what, after listening to his reasons, I agreed with him.”

I turned to face him. “Tell me, Marion, what would you have done if I had told you? You would have gone out and busted the meter maid and all you would have accomplished was to pin one cockroach to the kitchen counter, while the rest of the cockroaches scattered before you could bring up the lights, which was exactly the reason why HL wanted to sit on the story.”

“What about the guy you saw in Cooper's office?”

“How did you know about that?  Never mind.  I know. I'm not even sure who I saw in Cooper's office and, not that it matters now, but both HL and I were in agreement that you should be brought in on that. He just never had a chance … a chance to make it happen.”

He stared at me for a long time, his jaw tight, fighting between restraint and violence. He turned and began to walk from the room.

Anger leapt again, bringing me down. I pushed away from the window and ran after him.

“The least you can do, you prick, is tell me how HL and Felice are doing.”

“I'm not your fucking messenger boy, Teller.”

“Right,” I said, biting off the word. “How foolish of me to think you give a fuck.”

He whirled on me so fast I skidded on the slippery wooden floor, ducking as I did so; sure he was going to hit me.

“You listen to me, Teller,” he said, towering over me, his jaw clenched tight. “I care every bit as much for that old man as you do, you arrogant asshole. Who do you think guided my way through foster care after my old man hanged himself? After they hauled my mother away in a long-armed jacket? Who do you think paid my college tuition and supplemented my veteran's benefits so I could eat a decent meal and not have to wear Goodwill hand-me-downs? And who do you think recommended me for this position, then threw the entire force of his paper behind my appointment?”

I took a step back and actually mumbled an apology, hardly believing the words had passed my lips. He glared at me then walked away. I stood there, listening to his footfalls as they echoed down the hall.

Arrogant?

Arrogant!

“Arrogant?” I yelled out to him when I heard the ding of the elevator. “You're the one who walked away from our friendship. Arrogant? Hell! You never even thanked me for saving your miserable life.”

I heard the elevator doors slide shut, the buzz of the car's pneumatic descent mixing with the buzz of anger and despair in my head. I stared back into HL's office, no longer able to deal with the chaos it had become, the battle ground I had helped create.

Backing out Felice's office, I made one last stop and left the building.

As I pulled out the parking garage, I called the hospital for Felice's room number. Though they wouldn't give me information on her or HL's condition, they did let it slip that he was in the intensive care unit. They connected me to Felice's room but all I got was a busy signal. I flipped the phone closed.  One way or another, I had to see her.

Visiting hours were over for the day but when had rules like that ever stopped me? Crossing the lobby, I ducked into the fire stairs and ran up the four flights to Felice's floor. The floor was nearly deserted, one weary looking nurse behind a counter, hunched over a file or maybe a book to pass the time. She didn't look up as I passed. Maybe she didn't hear me. Maybe she didn't care. I found Felice's room and stepped inside.

She was sitting on the bed, staring out the window, her back to me. She was fully dressed in street clothes. A bandage was wrapped about her head. I had been expecting worse, so seeing her sitting there, so obviously ready to leave the hospital, caused such an immense wave of relief to wash over me I felt momentarily dizzy.

Leaning against the door jam, I tried to remember how long I'd known her and Albert. Thirty years? Forty? I'd met them while still a teenager, the year I worked as a summer intern for HL.

“Albert's gone to get a wheelchair, Teller.”

Startled, I jumped. It took me a second to remember where I was.

“I told them I didn't want one,” Felice said, still staring out the window. “But they insist. Silly rule.”